Concerning Sally Part 28

"Some misgivings about what, father?" Patty prompted.

"It doesn't matter, Patty. I have too many misgivings about everything. It is the fault of age. As I come to think of it, Sally looks like her mother. I hope her character--but Sally's character is all right. As to Sarah, we have spare rooms, haven't we?"

"Ye--es," a.s.sented Miss Patty reluctantly. She hated to give in, but she might have known that she would have to. She did know it. "But, father,--supporting the whole family--"

"There is no question," said Mr. Hazen quietly; and Patty knew that there was no more to be said. "It is a choice between letting that young Mr. Sanderson support them,--which he would be very glad to do, Patty,--and asking Sarah to come here. I much prefer to ask her. I wish to keep Sally with us and you are not willing to let Charlie go.

On this plan we shall keep them both. Will you write to Sarah, proposing it? Write as cordially as you can, Patty, will you? Thank you."

So it happened that Mrs. Ladue came to Whitby in September. It could not be said to have happened, perhaps, but, at all events, she came.

They all went down behind the stout horse to meet her; all but Uncle John. There were Cousin Patty and Charlie and Sally herself. Sally's eyes were very bright and there was the old spot of brilliant color in either cheek. Uncle John noticed it. He patted her hand as she got into the carryall, but he did not speak. Miss Patty did, after they got started. Sally was sitting up very straight and she was looking straight ahead and the spots of color were in her cheeks still. It was much as she had looked when she went away from her old home that she so loved. Miss Patty could not understand it. She was even a little afraid, I think.

"Sally," she said hesitatingly, "don't--don't look so--so _strained_.

Surely, this is not a time to feel worried or anxious. Surely, this is a--a joyous occasion."

To Miss Patty's surprise, Sally burst out laughing. As Miss Patty had implied, she did look strained. There may have been something a little hysterical about her laugh. Miss Patty was more afraid than ever. She proposed stopping at the apothecary's and getting a little camphor or--or something.

But Sally protested that she did not need camphor or anything. "You know, Cousin Patty," she went on, the tears standing in her eyes, "I haven't seen my mother for four years, and I don't know, quite, what to expect. I am very--very _fond_ of my mother, Cousin Patty. I can't help my feelings, but you needn't be afraid"--and Sally laughed a little--"that I am going to have hysterics or anything, for I'm not."

Miss Patty murmured some reply. Sally did not know what it was, and Miss Patty didn't either.

"I don't suppose," Sally continued, "that Charlie remembers mother very well, for he--"

"I do, too," said Charlie, with the pleasant manner which had become usual.

"Very well, then, you do," replied Sally patiently. And she said no more, for they were already turning down the steep hill that led to the station.

In time--it seemed a very long time--but in time the train came in; and Sally watched eagerly the crowd flowing down the steps and spreading out on the platform. Presently, near the end, came Henrietta, as fast as the people would permit. Sally gave a great sigh of relief, for she was beginning to be afraid--and there was Fox.

Sally edged impatiently toward the car steps. Fox was not looking at her; he was helping a lady whose eyes wandered eagerly over the waiting people. The lady's mouth drooped at one corner and her hair showed just a little gray behind her lifted veil.

Sally ran forward, elbowing her way without remorse; she had but one thought. Her chin quivered. A wave of tenderness overwhelmed her.

"Oh, mother! Mother, dear! Don't you know me?"

The drooping lips parted in a lovely smile. Sally felt her mother's arms around her. How she had longed for that!

"Why, Sally! Why, my own great girl! Why, darling, don't cry!"

CHAPTER VI

They soon got used to Mrs. Ladue's gentle presence among them. Uncle John got used to it more quickly than Sally did herself; much more quickly than Cousin Patty did. But then, her coming was none of Cousin Patty's doing, in spite of the fact that it was Cousin Patty who sent the invitation. It took Patty some time to get over that. The things that we are forced to do, however gentle the force may be, are seldom wholly acceptable to us. As for Sally, her happiness was too great to make it possible for her to get used to it immediately. She used to run in when she got home from school and hug her mother. She wanted to make sure that her presence was a "true fact," as she said. She wanted to touch; to be certain that she had not dreamed it.

Mrs. Ladue used to sit beside the table with its stained green cover, in that very homelike back parlor, in the long evenings, with Uncle John in his great chair before the bubbling fire. Miss Patty ran--or, no, she did not run, literally. That would have been most undignified besides being unnecessary; but it was probably unnecessary for Miss Patty to go out so often and stay so long about her household duties.

The duties of the household rather oppressed Miss Patty and sat heavily upon her. Household duties? Better be about them, Miss Patty thought. So she flitted nervously in and out twenty times during an evening. She was out more than she was in and her chair on the other side of the fire from Uncle John's was usually empty. She went to glance into the kitchen, to see what Bridget or Mary _could_ be about, it was so quiet there. She hadn't heard a sound for the longest while.

"Don't you think I'd better see, father?" And her father would smile quietly and tell her to do as she liked. Or she would wonder whether the maids had locked the cellar door; or there was that window in the pantry; or she had to see Charlie safely into bed, although one would think that Charlie was very nearly old enough to see himself safely into bed. There were things without end; anything that _might_ not be just as Patty thought it should be.

Uncle John and Mrs. Ladue sat quietly through it all, Mrs. Ladue with her sewing or her embroidery or her crochet work or her book. She was not much of an invalid, after all; not enough of an invalid to give any trouble. She had to be careful, that was all. She must not get too tired and she must have plenty of sleep. Those two things Doctor Galen had enjoined upon her at parting, with much impressiveness. And he thought that he might as well drop a line to Meriwether Beatty asking him to keep an eye on her and to let him know how she was getting along. "So you see, my lady, you are not out of my clutches yet," the doctor finished merrily. To which Mrs. Ladue had replied, almost tearfully, that she had no wish to get out of his clutches and that she never could repay him and she didn't want to and she shouldn't try. She _liked_ to feel that she owed her life to him--

"Tut, tut!" said the doctor, smiling. "Don't forget Fox."

And Mrs. Ladue protested that there was not the least danger of her forgetting Fox. She didn't know where they would all be if it had not been for Fox, and she was very fond of him, and she thought--Then Fox, himself, had appeared, and she said no more upon that subject, and they got into their train and presently they came away. But, whatever Mrs. Ladue's thoughts may have been, on that subject or on any other, she said little and seemed to invite confidence. There is no reason to believe that she wished confidences from anybody. It may have been only that she kept her thoughts to herself, for the most part, as Sally did, and that she was straightforward and truthful, as Sally was. That is not to imply that Sally was an exact counterpart of her mother. Probably Sally, in her mother's place, would have done very differently; almost certainly her relations with Professor Charles Ladue would have been different. Even as it was, it will be remembered that he seemed to have a certain fear of his little daughter. He had no fear of his wife. Mrs. Ladue's environment, to use a phrase that needs a deal of explaining before we know exactly what we mean, had been unsuited to her.

The new environment was not unsuited to her, at least as far as Uncle John was concerned. She helped to create an atmosphere of tranquillity; an atmosphere eminently suited to an old man and one to which that particular old man had not been accustomed. There was nothing tranquil or serene about Miss Patty. Uncle John, it is to be presumed, liked tranquillity and serenity. He succeeded in attaining to a surprising degree of it, in his own person, considering. Sally had been a help in the past four years; it was going on to five years now.

He was thinking upon these matters one evening as he sat reading. He was thinking more of them than of the page before him. He put the book down slowly, and looked up. Patty was upstairs with Charlie.

"Sarah," he remarked, "I find it very pleasant to have you with us."

Mrs. Ladue was surprised. There was no occasion for that remark unless Uncle John just wanted to make it. Sally, who had not yet gone upstairs, flushed with sudden pleasure and her eyes shone.

"There, mother!" she cried. "There now! You see. What did I tell--"

In Mrs. Ladue's face the faint color was coming and going. She spoke with some emotion.

"Thank you, Uncle John. It was kind of you to ask us. I find it very pleasant to be here. And that--it would be so easy not to make it pleasant. I haven't--I can't thank you suitably--"

"There is no question of thanks, Sarah," he replied, smiling gravely.

"I hope you will put that out of your mind. You give more than you get--you and Sally."

"I am very glad," Mrs. Ladue murmured; "very glad and grateful. Sally is a good girl." Uncle John smiled at Sally. "She would not bother you--"

Mr. Hazen reached forth and patted Sally's hand as it lay on the table. "No. Sally doesn't bother me very much."

"But Charlie," Mrs. Ladue continued, somewhat anxiously,--"Charlie, I'm afraid, does. He has changed a good deal in these four years. He's hard to manage."

"Patty can't manage him, if you mean that," Mr. Hazen agreed. "She doesn't try very hard. But he's developed in the wrong direction, that's all, I think."

"No." There was a curious hardness in Mrs. Ladue's voice and manner.

It did not seem possible that she could be speaking of her own little son. "I doubt if he could be developed in any other direction. He's very much like his father. His father was--" She stopped abruptly.

"But there is no use in going over that," she added.

Mr. Hazen nodded. "I knew Charles before you did," he observed, "and--but, as you say, there is nothing to be gained by going into that. I may as well speak to Patty--again."

"I have absolutely no influence with Charlie now," Mrs. Ladue sighed.

"It is natural enough that I should not have any."

Mr. Hazen's talk with Patty amounted to nothing, as was to be expected. No doubt he did expect it, for it is not to be supposed that he could have lived with Patty Havering for nearly forty years without knowing her traits. She had no real firmness. She had obstinacy enough; a quiet, mulish obstinacy which left her exactly where one found her. She was absolutely untouched by argument or persuasion, to which she made little reply, although she sometimes fretted and grew restive under it. Nothing short of her father's quiet "I wish it, Patty" was of the least avail. She gave in to that because she knew that it was a command, not because she knew that it was right. As to that, was not _she_ always right? She never had the least doubt of it.

She sometimes doubted the expediency of an act; it was not expedient to disobey her father's implied commands. Not that she had ever tried it, but she did not think that it would be expedient. I don't think that it would have been either. It was just as well, perhaps, that she never tried it. But, in a matter like this one of Charlie, there was no command direct enough to enforce obedience. You know what I mean, as Miss Patty might have said; thereby implying that she hoped that you did, for she didn't. She was not quite clear about it in her own mind, but there seemed little risk in doing as she wanted to rather than as her father wanted her to. Her own ideas were rather hazy and the more she tried to think it out the more muddled she got. Anyway, she said to herself, as she gave it up, she wouldn't, and she got up from the rocking-chair which she permitted herself in her own room and went briskly about her duties. She had sat there for as much as half an hour. She had been watching Charlie chasing about Morton's lot, for she could see over the high wall as she sat. Most of the boys were tolerant chaps, as most boys are, after a certain age; but some of them were not and some others had not reached that age of tolerance apparently. Fortunately for Miss Patty's peace of mind she did not happen to see any of that.

Miss Patty, however, did not make public her decision, but Mrs. Ladue knew what it was just as well as if she had shouted it from the housetop. Where did a talk with Patty end but where it began? And Mrs.

Ladue had been sitting at her own window--she shared Sally's room--she had been sitting at her own window while Patty sat at hers and looked at Charlie over the wall. But Mrs. Ladue watched longer than Patty and she saw several things which Patty was spared; to be sure, the wall was very high and cut off the view from a large part of the lot, but she saw Ollie Pilcher run after Charlie at last and chase him into that part of the lot which she could not see. Ollie was not noted for his patience, but Mrs. Ladue thought the loss of the remnants of it was excusable, in the circ.u.mstances. Then there was an outcry and it was not Ollie's voice that cried out.

Mrs. Ladue sighed and got out of her comfortable chair and went downstairs. She hoped she should be ahead of Patty when Charlie came in. She was not, but she and Patty waited together; and Charlie came.

He was not crying, but the traces of tears were on his face. Miss Patty gave a little exclamation of horror.

"Charlie," began Mrs. Ladue hurriedly, before Patty could speak, "come up with me. I want to talk with you."